The Life Cycle of an Idea
Creative practice in transition, exploring design, AI and the reorganisation of creativity
The project explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative practice, asking how ideas are formed, developed and shared, and how creative roles, authorship and collaboration are changing in response.
We are interested in what happens to an idea as it moves between people, tools, and systems. AI can accelerate iteration, introduce unpredictability, support experimentation, and enable new forms of collaboration. At the same time, it can standardise aesthetics, flatten nuance, obscure authorship, and displace creative labour.
These shifts raise important questions about creative agency, responsibility and visibility. Who is shaping ideas, and who is being shaped by them. What is emerging, what is being lost, and what does this mean for the future of creative practice.
We are seeking designers, artists and creative practitioners working across industry, independent practice, studios, collectives and academic contexts.
The project website will launch in February 2026. In the meantime, for enquiries or expressions of interest, please contact: Dr Layla Tweedie-Cullen or James Smith.
Research Team
- Dr Layla Tweedie-Cullen (Designer, Researcher, and Lecturer at AUT, NZ)
- James Smith (Designer, Researcher and Lecturer at AUT, NZ)
- Jayme Yen (Designer and Assistant Professor of design at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, USA)
- Blaine Western (Independent Researcher, Curator, and Design Engineer, UK)
- Henry Babbage (Independent Researcher, Curator, and Design Engineer, DE)
- Joshua Hamish Whitaker (Research Assistant, AUT)
The Life Cycle of an Idea (Under AI) is a collaborative research initiative supported by Auckland University of Technology (AUT).
Approved by Auckland University of Technology Ethics Committee, Reference 25/311.
The Life Cycle of an Idea: Expression of Interest
How is AI changing the way ideas emerge, evolve and circulate?
The Life Cycle of an Idea (Under AI) is an ethics-approved research project exploring how AI is reshaping creative practice, authorship, decision-making, and the evolution of ideas.
We are an international, interdisciplinary research team working across design, creative practice, education, and technology. We are seeking expressions of interest from artists, designers, technologists, educators, and makers.
If AI is influencing your practice in some way, whether through adoption, resistance, uncertainty, experimentation, or critique, we'd love to hear from you.
Participants will contribute to a growing international conversation examining authorship, experimentation, decision-making, collaboration, and creative labour in an AI-mediated environment.
More information and the Expression of Interest form can be found via the project website.
Ethics approval granted by the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) Ethics Committee (Reference 25/311). This project is supported by AUT, Contiguous, and split/fountain.